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Jan 15, 2014

One of the many game apps released around the time of the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who was Doctor Who: Say What You See. This little puzzle app was initially a paid app, and admittedly I wasn't too keen on the gameplay mechanic to want to invest. Thankfully the reverted to a free model later on and also ensured that the game was accessible to all regions. So yeah, free is always good.

The game is interesting enough, but very finite in it's enjoyment level. It combines the fun of a scavenger hunt game with visual word puzzles. Oh, and since it's a Doctor Who related game, then it's also quite the trivia piece as well.

The premise of the game is simple enough - you have a choice of different canvasses and each contains about 50 puzzles for you to find. At present the game has three options - the TARDIS, Totter's Yard and Gallifrey. Even after getting the app you'll still need to download each canvass individually, so make sure you do so before you bring your mobile device around and play the game when you're not online via WiFi.

The references in the various canvasses link to the entire span of Doctor Who history. And while the clues still lean in preference to the more recent incarnation of the show, you're still going to have some appreciation for the Classic era of the show to fully resolve each map.

The puzzle format is tricky since you don't know what you're looking for. You're going to click around the different canvasses to find items of interest. Once you've found one of these images, an in-app keyboard will then appear and you need to type in what you think the clue represents. Here's a sample of one of the puzzles:

So as you can see, they're sort of like rebus puzzles - thus you should in fact try "saying what you see" in order to get a better idea of what you're looking at. Unfortunately some of the references are pretty obscure (many of them being episode titles) and some of the visual clues don't immediately lead you to what the puzzle is. I've had to resort to further study of episode lists and other encyclopedia type resources to help me, which is a bit of a pain.

From an in-app purchasing perspective, you can buy credits that help unlock various hints to help you along. You can either look for a hint that indicates the name of a hidden item and thus you're free to find it or you can find a specific clue related to an image that you've already highlighted. The clues start out pretty vague and then become increasingly specific but even this may not be enough to help you through. The game definitely rewards knowledge of the full run of the series.

Doctor Who; Say What You See is a decent little puzzle app, but one that can become rather frustrating and with a very limited number of puzzles. You're bound to become highly dependent on future canvass releases and I haven't returned to the app for some time now since I've already completed the first three maps available. Still, it's a good amount of fun and it rates a decent 3 hidden coins out of a possible 5.